There have conventionally been air conditioning apparatuses that are configured by connecting a plurality of indoor units and an outdoor unit having a compressor. In a certain variety of such air conditioning apparatuses, air conditioning operations (air-cooling operation and air-warming operation) are performed so that the indoor temperature at each indoor unit arrives at a target temperature in each indoor unit. During such air conditioning operations, when the indoor temperature at each indoor unit reaches the target indoor temperature and air conditioning operations are no longer necessary, indoor thermo-off to suspend air conditioning operation at the indoor units is performed and outdoor thermo-off to stop the compressor is performed when all of the indoor units assume the indoor thermo-off state. When the indoor temperature deviates from the target temperature after outdoor thermo-off and air conditioning operations are needed, an outdoor thermo-on to restart the compressor is performed and an indoor thermo-on to restart the air conditioning operations of the indoor units is performed. Therefore, thermo-start/stop, in which outdoor thermo-off and outdoor thermo-on are repeated, is likely to occur when the air conditioning operations are performed with the air conditioning capacity requested by each indoor unit being low and the indoor temperature being close to the target indoor temperature.
In response to this problem, there are air conditioning apparatuses configured so as to set a time in which stopping of the compressor (i.e., outdoor thereto-off) is prohibited in order to reduce the frequency of thereto-start/stop, as in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 4-93558.